I was back at the Hans Arp museum on the Rhine today. We took a ferry across from Bad Honnef to Remagen, where they built the museum in 2007, joining the new modern building to a renovated train station. I’ve been before and had the same feeling, i.e. that this was the most beautiful museum I’ve ever been in.
This time I had to ask myself more directly: ‘Hey, is this the most beautiful museum I’ve ever been in?’ The answer was a Molly Bloom-like cascade of yeses, all down the hillside and into the river.
It’s not beautiful because of the artwork, although I love Arp. It’s beautiful because of the way it sits in the hills, a sprawling, wide-windowed structure that for all its alien whiteness seems to belong there. It is embracing/embraced by the grass. I could sing praises of the upshooting elevator all the day long. And the tunnel! Of course it also has the wonderful Rhine flowing below it.
The only bummer is all the walltexts relating to artwork and exhibitions are only in German, so it would frustrate most non-German speakers, and I wouldn't drive my parents out there. As I often do, I wonder if I should volunteer to translate it all for the good of humanity, but 1) I don’t have time and 2) Ach, the bureaucracy. Nevertheless, I think Arp would be happy to find this building spilling down the hills, and some texts from his "Wolkenpumpe" (Cloudpump) poems way up on the uppermost walls.
4 comments:
Did you take a picture, Sarah? I have a similar feeling
about Boston's Museum of Fine Art. I could happily look
at various sections of the inside of the building for
an hour or two which is about my limit in museums.
johanna
I took the picture here. I took some other pictures, but the problem is the individual pictures don't offer a feeling comprehensive. I've never been to Boston's MoFA. I hope to, some day.
Reminds me of your brother's pictures. It would
make a good book cover, yes?
johanna
Would make a great book cover!
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